I once had to explain what a universe was. Not the universe—that’s simple, it’s everything. But a universe, like the Marvel universe or the Star Trek universe. This was a different era and my questioner didn’t know anything about superheroes or space shows. I felt silly about bringing them up, so I pointed to the cop shows on TV. Every now and then, I said, the people from CSI: Miami get on a plane and you see them mix with the people on CSI: New York, or somebody from regular Law & Order shows up with the people on Law & Order: SVU. The Law & Order people and the people on CSI: New York all exist in the same city, but they’re never going to drop in on each other. That’s because, and here I got overambitious, it isn’t the same city. It’s two fictional New Yorks, each with different characters living there.
By this point her eyes had shifted, but a dreadful momentum carried me on. In theory, I said, whenever a character on CSI: Miami is doing something, the characters on CSI, CSI: New York, and any other CSI shows are busy leading their lives and pursuing cases. Anything they do might possibly come to the attention of and affect the people on CSI: Miami, and vice versa. Anybody encountered by the people on one CSI show could conceivably meet the people on some other CSI show. And the same for the people on the Law & Order shows. That’s a fictional world: a bunch of made-up people, events, and things that coexist.
Nodding in droopy fashion, the woman slipped away. Later she buttonholed me long enough to say this: “What you mean is they’re all owned by the same person.” That isn’t what I meant. But given the examples I chose, the point makes sense. CSI and Law & Order lack the crucial ingredient for a fictional universe. There have to be people who care about the coexistence. Sometimes just the author is enough, as with William Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha County. More often a horde of nerdy fans is what makes the difference. Superheroes and space shows have many such fans. Crime shows may have a few, but mainly the audience is people looking for some quick entertainment. They don’t try to dwell in the world a show creates; they don’t reason out its dimensions and history. They have their remote control close at hand and can always hop somewhere else.
Another way of putting this is that crime show viewers are normal whereas Star Trek and superhero fans are weirdly obsessed. That’s how the ground rules lay when I was growing up. I was happy to lose interest in comic books, given all the other barriers between me and normalcy. At the time of my conversation, the rules had budged but that’s all. Now I think they’ve changed. For a while there Hollywood was pretty much Marvel with a fringe of romcoms and spy movies hanging off. The Marvel films leaned hard into the universe side of things, with characters showing up on their own and then in various combinations, most of these involving the Avengers. The mass audience had no problem with the idea, responding the same way comic book fans did in the 1970s: by supporting the line of product instead of picking out one or two choice items.
“Weirdly obsessed” can still come in handy when discussing fans, such as the person sitting in front of me who broke down sobbing because Tony Stark died in Avengers: Endgame. But it no longer applies to the simple acceptance of a fictional universe. At the same time, viewers don’t feel obligated to apply universe logic whenever a likely situation comes into view. In theory, Puddy from Seinfeld could sell a car to Ross from Friends; that’s because Kramer sublet his apartment from Mad About You’s Paul Buchman, who was waited on at Riff’s Bar by Ursula Buffay, twin sister to Friends’ Phoebe Buffay. But no one cares.
Looking back on these shows, present-day connoisseurs don’t deplore the illogic of Jerry Seinfeld, supposedly Paul Buchman’s ex-neighbor, not recognizing him during the cameo that Seinfeld shot for Mad About You. The worst I’ve seen is a Collider post taking note of the discrepancy, as opposed to angry message board posts assailing the show makers for carelessness. Stunts were being pulled, that’s all. Kramer popped up on Mad About You to give the show a boost; when time came for Seinfeld to give Mad another boost, the backstory justifying Kramer’s appearance could be dropped. The people who like the shows expect nothing more.
After all these years, I wonder if my questioner is now up to speed on universes. I saw a spot illustration of Goliath in The New Yorker. Not even Ant-Man, who had movies about him, just Goliath. Some downtown artist had done it, I suppose; it looked goofier and fancier than comic book product. If Goliath is in The New Yorker, even as a spot illo, the world has changed. First, because he’s a superhero, but second, because he’s an obscure superhero. He’s there because he’s part of the Marvel universe; that’s the kind of pull a universe now has. At the same time, sitcoms and crime shows don’t seem any more interested in maintaining airtight continuity. I like the new order of things. During an era when the tribes lash at each other, we have two kinds of mass audience peacefully sharing the sunlight of recognized normalcy.